Muzzy Lane Software powers multiple awards for games at Serious Play Conference

Newburyport, MA August 31, 2011. Muzzy Lane Software is pleased to report that two of the top three awards in the Education Category at the Serious Games Conference in Redmond, Washington were presented to games that it has co-developed. Practice Marketing, developed with educational publisher McGraw-Hill, won the Silver medal; and MIDDWorld Online, developed with Middlebury Interactive Languages, took the Bronze medal.

Practice Marketing is a 3D, multiplayer strategy game that allows teachers to engage their students with the key concepts of marketing in an intuitive game environment while remaining academically and pedagogically sound. Students are intended to earn by doing. Using the 4 Ps of marketing, students are required to create a product and launch it to market successfully by making smart choices regarding their target market segment, distribution channels, pricing and promotional message. Students conduct competitive research by analyzing their competitors’ choices. The game keeps track of each player’s market share in the target segment and students also receive feedback from their customers for further analysis.

MiddWorld is an innovative 3D language learning role-play game created as part of MIL's online world language courses. The game world adapts the highly successful full-immersion formula modeled on the Middlebury College Language Schools. Created to be played online with any browser, the visually rich, highly detailed RPG delivers a world full of culturally accurate sights and sounds, designed to complement the dynamic online Middlebury Interactive immersion coursework to effectively teach world languages to high school students. A key learning element of this game is that players must use their acquired target language vocabulary or intuit how to interact with others without using any English. Authentic colloquialisms and other realia are incorporated throughout the game for students to be exposed to the critical cultural aspects of the target language.

“We are very excited to see these games recognized,” said Muzzy Lane’s Vice President of Design Bert Snow, “and we are gratified to be able to collaborate with McGraw Hill Education and Middlebury Interactive Languages to help them realize the potential for games in learning. We are especially pleased to win multiple awards in a competition that included the caliber of games competing at the Serious Play Conference.”

Both games are powered by Muzzy Lane’s Sandstone platform and will be available to students this fall. The company continues to develop these games and a range of additional innovative learning game projects.

About Muzzy Lane Software, Inc.
Muzzy Lane Software, Inc., listed by Fast Company magazine as one of their “Top 10 New Education Companies to Watch,” creates immersive 3D games to be played on any Internet browser. In addition to strong game design and development capabilities, Muzzy Lane has developed the Sandstone platform – a hosted game service that delivers multiplayer 3D games to the browser as a fully integrated web application. Sandstone has been developed specifically to support the unique and complex needs of learning game projects. In addition to its own self-published games, Muzzy Lane has developed projects for The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Cengage Learning, The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), McGraw-Hill Education, The Robert Woods Johnson Foundation, Middlebury Interactive Languages, Pearson Education, and The Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

About McGraw-Hill Higher Education
McGraw-Hill Higher Education, a unit of McGraw-Hill Education, is a leading innovator in the development of 21st century teaching and learning digital solutions for postsecondary and higher education markets worldwide. Through a comprehensive range of traditional and digital education content and tools focused on improving student learning outcomes, McGraw-Hill Higher Education empowers and prepares professionals and students to connect, learn and succeed in the global economy. McGraw-Hill Education, a division of The McGraw-Hill Companies (NYSE:MHP) , has offices in 33 countries and provides educational content in more than 65 languages. Additional information is available at http://www.mheducation.com/.

About Middlebury Interactive Languages
Middlebury Interactive Languages (MIL) is the premier academic leader in world language instruction for K-12 students. A joint venture of Middlebury College and K12 Inc. (NYSE: LRN), the nation’s largest provider of proprietary curriculum and online education programs for K-12 students, MIL is a national leader in providing greater access to superior world language programs and a key contributor to the success of digital learning initiatives to provide students with the skills they need to be competitive in a 21st Century global marketplace.